Steven Spielberg will be joining film composer John Williams and the Phoenix Symphony for a benefit concert Saturday, Sept. 28.

The world-famous director, who grew up in Scottsdale, will show clips from his films with and without their scores to talk about the function of music in the cinema. Jim Ward, president and CEO of the symphony, calls it a “master class in film and score.”

“They’ve only done this at the Kennedy Center (in Washington, D.C.) and in Atlanta, so this is quite a big event for us,” he said.

Williams and Spielberg are donating their time for the concert, with proceeds going to the symphony’s education and community-outreach programs. The event is one of the first performances of the 2013-14 season, which the symphony is billing as a season of “Big Names and Big Music.”

“I don’t think you can get any bigger than John Williams and Steven Spielberg,” Ward said.

The symphony announced Spielberg’s participation Wednesday, July 24.

Ward, who joined the symphony in 2011, previously worked as president of LucasArts and senior vice president of Lucasfilm, producer of both the “Star Wars” films and the Spielberg-directed Indiana Jones adventures. It was there that he got to know Williams, the Academy Award-winning composer who scored both of those series and collaborated with Spielberg on such other films as “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “Lincoln.”

Ward also notes that the event will be “a homecoming of sorts” for Spielberg, who attended Arcadia High School and premiered his first feature, “Firelight,” at Phoenix Theatre in 1964.

The concert will be 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, at Symphony Hall, 75 N. Second St., Phoenix. Tickets, from $175 to $500, can be purchased at 602-495-1999 or phoenixsymphony.org.

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